Way to Blue: Happy Birthday Nick

18/06/2013 - 10.15

Matt Bellingham, Lecturer in Music Technology

Way to Blue: Happy Birthday Nick

June 19th 2013 would have been Nick Drake’s 65th birthday.

Nick Drake was one of several wonderful musicians to emerge from the fertile folk and folk-rock scenes of the 1960s and early 1970s. While always a solo artist he worked with some of the great musicians of the time; Richard Thompson played on his first album, and John Martyn’s Solid Air was written for and about Drake. Nick Drake’s work is intimate, intricate and highly personal; the themes are universal and the performances captivating.

Drake was not, however, a good ‘fit’ with the folk scene of the late 1960s. Although folk music was enjoying a revival he was not singing traditional songs. His performances were of original material which was quite dissimilar to traditional folk music. Drake’s music did not make use of catchy sing-along choruses and he was cripplingly shy, making live performance difficult. Neither did his recordings find a ready audience. A review in Melody Maker described his first album, rather dismissively, as ‘an awkward mix of folk and cocktail jazz’. His records, now considered classics, sold poorly; his last album, Pink Moon, sold fewer than 5,000 copies in his lifetime.